Strange Imprint
by evieeden
Summary: Bella and Paul were always a little different. Advent story written for 6th December.


**Happy 6****th**** December everyone. Hope you're all keeping well today. Today's offering is a bit of a fluffy piece (or as fluffy as I tend to get) so I hope you enjoy it.**

**Loads of love goes to idealskeptic, who once more has been totally fabulous and betad this fic for me. As always, I don't own anything to do with Twilight.**

**Strange Imprint**

They had such a strange relationship, Bella mused. Not at all what people expected, not at all what she had anticipated for herself really, but it worked for both of them.

The rest of the pack didn't understand it. All the other imprinted couples – with the exception of Quil and Claire – had immediately fallen into romantic relationships. Although she and Paul were close, they weren't like that.

Although she supposed if anyone saw them like this they wouldn't believe it.

Paul was currently lying flat out on his stomach across his bed, fast asleep. His face, usually so hard-set, had relaxed in his sleep making him look like the seventeen-year-old boy he really was. Bella was sprawled on top of him, her chest pressed against his back, their legs entwined. Both of them were naked.

They weren't sleeping together. Well, technically they were, but literally just sleeping. Ever since Paul had imprinted on her that day in the forest, they had made a habit of being together at night, especially since they were both usually so busy during the day.

At first it had been Paul sneaking in through her bedroom window after Charlie had turned in and crawling into bed with her. The presence of the other helped them both sleep. Then, later on, she had started venturing over to his place at night. She was at the reservation so much anyway that it seemed stupid to make him run all the way out to Forks just to spend time with her. It took a while for her to convince her father that she was grown up enough to stay over at a boy's house. She still hadn't managed to convince him yet that Paul wasn't actually her boyfriend. And now she was practically living here full time. Most of her clothes and favourite possessions had gradually made their way into his home and she spent more time here than at the house she shared with her father. It had all changed so much over the last year.

She idly traced a finger over his shoulder blade, following the line of the muscles in his back.

She couldn't really remember when they had started sleeping together naked. It had just happened, like the rest of their sort-of relationship.

She vaguely remembered Paul coming home one day when she was already half-asleep and stripping off his cut-offs before he crawled under the sheet with her, but she had no recollection of when or why she started doing the same.

She thought it might be something to do with the imprint.

Everyone always told her that Paul would be whatever she needed, whatever she wanted, that was the number one rule when it came to wolves and their imprints. She had always thought it was a little more complicated than that. The wolves already had a lot of responsibility protecting the tribe, to add to that pressure by making them responsible for another person seemed a little excessive.

So Bella came to the conclusion that it possibly wasn't the one-way street that everyone believed. Instead, she thought it was as much as her giving Paul what _he_ needed and wanted just as much as the other way round.

Sure, he had followed her timetable, giving her the space to recover from her abandonment by the Cullens, and he had supported her when she had tentatively headed off to college in Port Angeles, his confidence boosting her up where hers had failed.

He gave her what she needed, and she thought that she gave him what he needed too.

Part of her had already known what was lacking in his life. After he had imprinted on her, Sam had ordered Jake to sit down with her and tell her all about the wolves and about Paul's new role in her life.

She hadn't taken it well.

In an effort to calm her panic, Jake had told her more about Paul as a man, trying to make him less of a stranger to her.

So she knew that his mother had run off to Tacoma when he was young, leaving him to be raised by his frequently absent father. She knew that being abandoned had wounded him as much as it had her, but where she had retreated into herself, he had poured his hurt outwards into anger and fighting and, when he was old enough, sex. She knew that before her he had used women as disposable objects and then cast them aside, taking the warmth they briefly offered him but not letting them get too close.

And, more importantly, from that she knew what he needed from her as his imprint.

He needed her to be there for him. Just the same as she needed him to be there for her. It was about comfort and stability for both of them, and so romance had never come into that.

He needed company, someone to talk to outside of his pack mates. His father was still living on the reservation, but they lived apart and Paul never had anything particularly good to say about him. So Bella spent time with him. She let him rant and throw things, she listened to him complain about patrol and Sam and being stuck on the reservation. He needed proper nourishment. Between patrols, school and trying to do odd jobs around the reservation to earn extra money, he hardly had any time to look after himself. So she made sure that he got fed, sharing dinners and dropping off pot roasts and casseroles for him to eat when she wasn't there. When he needed rest, she slept in the same bed as him, and when he had needed more human contact they had extended their closeness to when they were awake as well as asleep, sharing hugs and holding hands.

Skin contact was a new thing though.

Really, Bella guessed that she had taken her cue from him. When he had started stripping off in front of her, she had begun to do the same. Strangely, she had never felt embarrassed being naked in front of him.

When she was with Edward she had been constantly worried and ashamed of her body. On an intellectual level, she knew that vampires were inhumanly beautiful and that no ordinary person could ever compete with their attractiveness, but that still didn't stop the comparisons. She would never be as petite or willowy as Alice, the perfect clothes-horse, with her perfect hair and dainty hands. She would never be as tall or curvaceous as Rosalie, the ideal swimwear model, with her long, golden locks and ability to walk in high heels. Her list of criticisms had slowly grown in their presence: her butt was too big, her boobs were too small, her mouth was too uneven, her face was too long, she couldn't walk three steps without tripping over air... The list went on.

None of that seemed to matter when she was with Paul. She knew he would accept her, flaws and all, just as she would accept him, so when he had crawled into bed nude one day, she had just followed his example.

He hadn't said anything about her nudity, but he had pulled her that little bit tighter towards him that night so that she was on top of him.

And she liked it. She liked being able to feel all of him against her body. She liked being able to breathe in deeply and inhale his scent straight off his body. She liked being able to stretch across his chest and feel their hearts beating together.

It was comforting and it was what they both needed.

But she didn't think anyone else would understand.

Other people, if they could see them right now, would take one look and jump to the wrong conclusion.

No matter what they assumed, Bella and Paul weren't having sex.

Well, Bella wasn't having sex. She was fairly certain Paul wasn't either, but even if he was she didn't really mind. She understood that he was a very physical creature – that had only been heightened when he had phased for the first time – so if he needed female company, she wasn't going to begrudge him that, especially since they weren't like that together. Sometimes she thought she wouldn't mind it so much though if they _were_ like that.

"What are you thinking about?" His drowsy voice interrupted her thoughts. "I can hear your brain ticking up there."

"You," she answered honestly, stopping the movement of her fingers and propping her head up so her chin rested between his shoulders.

"Me?" His low voice rumbled up at her, pleasant vibrations travelling up from his chest across her skin. "What about me?"

"Actually I was thinking about you and sex."

He froze underneath her, every sleepy muscle suddenly alert.

"What do you mean?" There was a note of caution in his tone and Bella suddenly regretted blurting out the truth like that, especially if it made him feel uncomfortable.

She slid off his body to the side of the mattress and sat up, placing her hands in her lap. Following her example, Paul flipped over onto his back and pulled himself backwards so that he was half-propped up against the headboard. Yawning, he rubbed a hand over his eyes and then focused on Bella.

She stared back at him for a moment before realising that he was still waiting for her to answer. It was easier talking to his back about this though, rather than his face, so she ended up fixing her eyes somewhere to the left of his ear.

"I mean, that I was thinking about how we're not like the other imprinted couples and how we're not romantic or anything, but that no-one would believe it if they could see us asleep."

He snorted in agreement, but didn't say anything else so Bella continued.

"Right! Exactly! They'd believe that we were sleeping together – having sex together, I mean," she corrected herself. "But that's just...not us."

Her voice trailed off as she noticed that Paul was now frowning at her.

"Well, no," he eventually agreed. "But we will be like that eventually."

Bella's eyes shot to his. "What?" This time it was she who was left confused.

"We're not like that yet," he repeated slowly. "But in the future sometime, we will be like all the others, and that'll include sex."

She blinked at him, dumbfounded.

Paul waited as patiently as he could for her reply – about five seconds – before sighing and rolling his eyes.

"Christ, Swan! Where did you think this was going?"

He rubbed his hand over his face once more and then propped it behind his head.

"I don't know," she blurted out. "I haven't thought about that. I don't... You know I'm a... a virgin, right?"

Paul laughed then and Bella suddenly felt incredibly exposed in front of him, something she hadn't felt in a long time. Grabbing the sheet, she pulled it off his legs and around her body, covering herself up as if that meant he could no longer see her.

"Hey, hey, hey!" he immediately soothed, bolting upright. Ignoring her protesting hands, he reached across and lifted her up and onto his lap where he wrapped her tightly in his arms. "Don't be like that. I wasn't laughing at you."

Bella felt her breath begin to hitch as water began to well in her eyes. "What were you laughing at then?"

"I was..." He stopped abruptly and blew out a sharp breath. "I was laughing at the situation, I guess. And yes, I did know that you're a virgin. That's not even an issue, so you shouldn't make it one, okay? What I meant - Jesus, this is hard - is that I thought you knew as well as I did that we were taking it slow, a step at a time, rather than not going anywhere at all."

Bella opened her mouth, and then closed it again. He had really thought that – really seen them as some kind of couple?

"Oh."

She tried to figure it out in her head. Were they really a couple?

She didn't realise that she'd asked that last question out loud, until he answered her.

"Of course, we are. We're just our kind of couple, rather than everyone else's."

She looked at him carefully, studying his open face. He was watching her carefully as if she was some kind of wild animal that might bolt at any moment.

"Look, Bella, we're not like Sam and Emily or Kim and Jared. We're not the type of people to just throw ourselves headlong into a romantic relationship, you, because of your stuff with the leeches, and me, because...well... You know I've never had a relationship with a girl before you, not a proper relationship anyway. I'm no more used to that than you are. You weren't ready for it. I wasn't ready for it." He huffed out a laugh. "To be honest, I still don't think either of us are ready for it right now."

She nodded, recognising the truth in his words.

"But, the truth is, I like you."

His pronouncement wouldn't have sounded like much to anyone else, but to Bella it was more than enough. He liked her. A warm glow spread through her body and her lips quirked upwards in a small smile.

"And," he continued, "I don't know what you're like with your other friends, but I've never seen you move in with them or sleep naked in their beds before."

She blushed. "I guess it's not the sort of thing another guy or girl would understand really."

"Not really, no," Paul agreed.

"So, for now, we're like... special friends," she tried to put a name to it.

Paul laughed again, but this time she knew it was at her turn of phrase rather than her. "Yeah, we're special friends, Swan. If that's how you want to put it." He ran a hand through his short black hair and then yawned again.

"But in the future we'll be more," she clarified. "With sex."

She tried to imagine what it would be like, being like that with Paul - having a relationship, _having sex!_ It felt kind of right.

Really, she felt like she need to smack herself in the head for not realising before that even though she and Paul weren't like the other imprints, they were slowly finding their way towards a compromise that worked for both of them.

And they had a future together. That was a nice thought.

"Yep." Paul smacked his lips together with relish. "Sex, head, maybe even some kissing if you're lucky."

He grinned and Bella slapped him on the shoulder with an outraged gasp.

"Paul!"

His smile got wider, completely unrepentant.

"I am not giving you head." She pushed against him and he flopped backwards so that he was laying down once more, taking her body, still wrapped in his arms, with him. Bella shrieked at the sudden movement, but he ignored it and began unwrapping her from the sheet, throwing it over the top of both of them once they were skin to skin again.

"So you say now, but when the time comes you might want to." He was thoroughly unconcerned by her threat. "You might want me to go down on you. Who knows? We're not there yet." He closed his eyes and threw an arm over his face. "Can we go back to sleep now or is your mind still on overdrive?"

"No, we can sleep."

Bella settled down on top of him once more and tried to relax. Something he had said came back to her though.

"I might kiss you though, you know," she stated boldly and then blushed, even if he couldn't see her.

"Might you now?" The amusement in his voice was plain to hear.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she lifted herself up and pressed her lips against his before quickly scooting back down his body and resting her head against his chest.

Paul didn't react for a full minute and Bella squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could protect her from what she had just done.

Finally he spoke.

"Do that again when I'm properly awake and I'll show you what's in store for when we're ready."

Bella giggled nervously. "I might take you up on that."

"Do," he encouraged her.

He tightened his grip on her a little and warm in his arms, she drifted off to sleep and dreams of the future.


End file.
